Christies House Price Index

The latest Christies House Price Index, using the most up to date reliable data from the Land Registry, confirms that property in the local area continues to represent an outstanding investment.

Medium and long term gains are exceptional. Based on past performance anyone looking to buy a property in the coming months will be very encouraged to see that prices have risen by 25% over the previous ten years and by an astonishing 156% over the previous 15 years.

What is perhaps even more impressive is that in spite of the down turn in the property market since 2007/2008 prices are now only a mere 5% lower than they were 5 years ago.

The comparison is based on the average price of all local properties sold including flats, maisonettes, all types of houses and bungalows. Figures for April & May are not yet available - the Index will be revised as soon as the data is released so please check this page regularly for any updates.

Date............Average Price.........Average Price Mar 2013.......YEARS............INCREASE

Mar-98............£100,393..........................£257,302...........................15.....................156%

Mar-03............£205,834..........................£257,302...........................10.......................25%

Mar-08............£271,103..........................£257,302............................5.........................-5%

Over the years, and particularly in recent times, demand for properties in Cheam and the nearby areas, such as Sutton, Ewell, Epsom, Banstead and Kingswood, has increased dramatically. Much of this demand is due to the location of the properties we sell, which are ideally situated on the fringes of London, bordering rural Surrey greenbelt countryside with picture postcard villages and market towns full of rich heritage and character.

Buyers flood into the area to take advantage of a wide range of leisure and shopping amenities. The local schools are nationally renowned and attract large numbers of enquiries, ensuring that property sale levels and prices have remained well above quoted national averages.

Cheam Village has a flourishing local community with many popular cafés, restaurants and varied independent shops and businesses; this, coupled with many high street names, creates an enviable mix of retail and food outlets. Combined with excellent road and rail links, demand for property remains constant and represents an exceptional investment.

Christies have an unparalleled understanding of the area and are dedicated to ensuring customers are always informed – not just on the property market and prices ,but also the area and amenities. When looking at buying a new home, we believe it is imperative that our purchasers are fully informed about all aspects of the potential move.

Your estate agent should be able to answer any of your questions regarding this. We are proud to represent this area and convey that passion to anyone looking to move here.

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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Summit Fever

Nick Churton from our London Mayfair Office reports some better news on the housing front.

Every year the influential Mayfair Group organises a round of regional summit meetings across the country with member agents from over 100 firms from the top of Scotland to the tip of Cornwall and just about everywhere in between. This forum is an opportunity to discuss, analyse and understand the property market from local, regional and national perspectives. For several years these summits were quite sombre affairs at times as estate agents across the length and breadth of the UK reported difficult trading, low sales figures and a general inertia in the market.

But this year was different. At each forum there was a feeling of marked optimism, of increased sales, of more enquiries and of greater interest. Certainly the issues and problems of difficult mortgages and hard-to-acquire deposits are still prevalent. But the overwhelming feeling was one of increased confidence in the property market, in jobs, and in the economy.

Property is always the first in to a recession and is inevitably the first out - but always with an upward trend. We know this only too well from the last three recessions we have been through since the early seventies. Indeed since the mid-fifties the average house price rise per parliament – six Labour and six Conservative – has been about 58%. That is 54.8% under Labour and 61.2% under Conservative. So, in house price terms, there is not much between the two major political parties. But if Mr Cameron does not want his legacy to be one of overall house price decline then he will need to stay in office through a time of post-recession growth as did two Conservative prime ministers before him - Thatcher and Heath. Averaged over their tenancies at No 10 house prices increased by more than 155%!

But at least our current prime minister may now take heart from some recovery. From our reports across the UK it certainly sounds as if we have begun the long haul out of the greatest economic peacetime crisis in living memory. Nowadays the media is full of news about the market although one isn’t sure they always get it right. But estate agents are the very first to understand what is really happening in the housing market – their businesses and livelihoods depend on it. The Mayfair Group regional summits were revealing. Boom times are not exactly back – except perhaps in Central London. But one suspects that a period of slow but sustained incremental growth in activity, demand and value will carry us through the next few years. This will provide us with a relatively stable, non-volatile market which will help give an impetus to the rest of the economy.

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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Get On Your Bike

March seems to have seen a major step forward in the property market. Nick Churton of our London Mayfair Office considers the significance of the latest figures.

Official figures now point out that the housing market hit a three-year high in March. But we didn’t really need official figures to tell us that.  The level of activity has increased significantly.  The higher number of viewings, offers and sales is there for all to see. Inevitably the number of properties on the market is dwindling. Pressure on buyers is growing.  In some areas gazumping is raising its ugly head again – remember gazumping?

 Of course this increased activity is by no means across the board and we are a long way from repairing all the damage of the past seven years.  But it is a start.  Can we sustain this improvement? It is all down to the economy, jobs, interest rates, other people, other countries and confidence. Last spring started the same way. But then we had the Euro crisis.

The recent death of Margaret Thatcher reminds those of us who lived through it, of her decade in power.  It was a time of depression, anger and protest - but also one of growth, of greater opportunity and getting on one’s bike to look for work. We are also reminded of Baroness Thatcher’s housing legacy – good or bad.  Say what you will about the Iron Lady – and most do have a lot to say – she did put confidence and pride into a country that was at a very low ebb.  The happy recipients of her right-to-buy housing policy at the time are generally supportive. But many benefactors of that policy today blame her for a share of our housing woes. Yet the confidence she instilled did power a period of intense property growth. The economists will argue these points for years.

But the past is another country. We must look forward. Who’s to say that this latest surge in activity will not be the kick-start we need now? Spring is, at last, almost here.  Other buyers are out there eagerly looking at property. My advice is don’t wait until you see a property on a property portal. By then it could be too late. Property portals are useful but they do level the playing field. The best way of finding the right property is still having a regular dialogue with a good estate agent.  It’s the best way to get ahead of the rest – just like they did in the ‘80s!

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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Market Comment - 2013 Budget Special

Nick Churton of our London Mayfair Office considers the impact the 2013 Budget may have on the residential property market.

The British public are serious about housing. They are serious about looking at it, choosing it, buying it, improving it and, when the time comes, they are serious about selling it. It is a national obsession.

Sadly, successive Governments don’t seem to have been quite so serious or obsessive as the electorate and, thus far, the coalition’s behaviour has been little different. Over the past few years there has been a number of lacklustre housing initiatives which have not effectively managed to stimulate a sector stubbornly refusing to rally much from the banking crisis.

The 2013 Budget had few real headlines. But at least housing was a major feature. While no new real initiatives were announced, alterations to existing measures did catch the eye: £3.5bn in capital spending over three years to shared equity loans and a loan of up to 20% of a home's value to be offered to people looking to move up the housing ladder. It remains uncertain whether these measures will be enough in themselves. It is confidence that really stokes the property market, not rhetoric or spin, which can never replace the essential drivers of personal desire, affordability and the tantalising promise of a good investment return.

Time will tell if these new measures will be enough. Meanwhile the market continues to improve in some areas better than others.   London and the southeast lead the way with foreign buyers targeting the capital as a safe haven for their money - London being better than Cyprus for investment just now! With the added benefit of a falling pound this seems set to continue and has the potential of helping to lift London prices further still through the year. In other parts of the country it is the local economies that will affect the regional housing markets.  So the Chancellor’s Budget measures for regional enterprise, personal tax and small businesses may provide an extra welcome stimulus.

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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Spring Fever

With spring approaching Nick Churton of our London Mayfair Office, which our active national marketing office, takes a look at how the property market is shaping up as we approach what is traditionally the busiest time of the property year.

The nation, albeit reluctantly sometimes, looks to London for its lead in so many areas of our lives. And property is certainly one of them. What happens in London influences what might happen in the rest of the country - given time. It is the ripple effect.

We naturally seem to look to the capital when gauging when it is best to sit tight or move on. In booms and busts over the past forty or fifty years London has acted as the nation's barometer.

Yet it is more difficult to see what's happening now. This time it is different. This is because central London property is acting as banker to so many foreign nationals. While it remains such a stable and even profitable place to invest it is hard to see this trend weakening. It is by no means copper-bottomed but central London has become a market unto itself in recent years and tends to mask the health of the UK property market in general. But even in London this super-market is limited to boroughs like Kensington and Chelsea rather than Tower Hamlets

.

While there is so much international uncertainty London should retain its allure as a sanctuary for threatened capital. What average Middle Eastern oil billionaire is not going to invest heavily overseas when his entire region is in the grip of Arab Spring fever? It makes perfect sense.

So London is now, as ever, divided into those who have a lot and those with not such a lot. And it is the latter group, most of us mere mortals, who point a way to what the overall market is up to. Over the past year it has become clear that it is not central London but Greater London and the Home Counties which are leading the way. Not so many Middle Eastern or Russian oil billionaires are investing there - nor Indian or Chinese super-industrialists. It is the comfortable, leafy and commuter-friendly towns that are perhaps seeing the firmest signs of an English spring fever in property.

Will this ripple to other areas of the country in the short to medium term? There are certainly signs of fresh activity in most counties. As London dusts itself down from the banking crisis - helped by some improvement in the Euro Zone and US financial systems - then, for the foreseeable future at least, the London ripples should widen their range and increasingly lap at other areas of the country.

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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Property and Prejudice

Exactly two hundred years after Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice Nick Churton of our London Mayfair Office looks at how our dreams and aspirations in owning property may have changed.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single family in possession of a good mortgage must be in want of a house. Jane Austen’s popular novel may have been about the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people's character and morality. But it also had a great deal to do with the acquisition of property.

Austen knew a thing or two about property, or at least the importance of owning it. Although her preferred route to possession would have been through marriage or inheritance, she would have understood about financing a property purchase through a mortgage as her life coincided with the advent of the building society movement.

Austen understood that social status played a major role in owning or aspiring to own property. Above all perhaps, she understood that an individual’s or family’s financial circumstances played a pivotal role in determining where and how one lived - and how one was seen to live. She certainly knew the value of a fine location and the benefits that well-proportioned rooms and good natural light bestowed upon occupants.

This understanding seems as apt today as it was when Jane Austen was alive in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The desire to house one’s self and/or one’s family comfortably, and the pleasure that a well-designed house gives to its owner - both socially and materially – seem largely unaltered.

But two things have changed. Residential property no longer just demonstrates wealth but creates it, and thus makes it even more desirable. Also, the de-mutualisation of the building societies and their takeover by banks is threatening the way we think about owning property. Today this means that, unless the government and the banks husband the situation carefully and responsibly, for the first time in two hundred years it may only be the already well off who can realistically afford to buy property.

Building societies were created to allow their members to buy property. Banks were created to make money for their shareholders. Building societies were prudent and fiscally responsible. Banks clearly haven’t been and are a perfect example of pride coming before a fall. To extract themselves from the trouble they are in the banks now seem prejudiced against the very people the building societies were formed to assist. Jane Austen could have written a book about it.

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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Braveheart

It’s a new year and Nick Churton of our London Mayfair Office offers some thoughts on the property market and what we should expect in the coming months.

It must be hard for all those long-term home owners, who have benefited so much from the property market's rich bounty over the years, to come to terms with the fact that for some time to come homes won't be the cash cows they have been in the past.

First-time buyers in their twenties and early thirties are perhaps more fortunate. The last time property was surging in value most of this group weren't taking much notice. For many of them what went on during the hours of darkness was more interesting than what went on in the cold light of day.

So, not for them an early step onto the property ladder - as the generation before them had been so keen to do. This older group had had the benefit of received wisdom from the previous two generations. Property was a sure fire winner they were told. Nothing could ever go wrong they were assured. Except it could and it did. So much so that property ownership for young adults of the noughties became something of a pipe dream.

But now it is this very generation who are leading a small recovery in the property market. They have proved property ownership is possible before they are forty, or even thirty, by price adjustment, some careful saving, calling on benevolent parents and even grandparents, or perhaps through shared ownership schemes - all mixed together with a little more money being available at very low interest rates.

In recent years it has become apparent to all generations that property ownership through inheritance is not always a given.  Inherited property is a notion last fully understood by the Georgian and Victorian aristocracy who, as life expectancy was a lot less than it is now, didn’t have to take into account the cost of elderly care and its eroding effect on legacies.

Yes, there are hot spots where property values are increasing steeply and money will be made. But this is largely in Central London, buoyed up by foreign investment with some home-grown city/hedge fund bonuses thrown in. We learn that there are now 300,000 property millionaires in the UK today. But again, these are mainly in and around London.

For those living outside the capital, where according to Nationwide an average of £1,500 was sliced off house prices last year, the ripple effect frequently has come to financial aid in the past. But it looks as if there will not be many ripples in the near future. And none at all if foreign investors pack up and go home for any reason. Then the London market may find itself built on sand rather than anything more substantial.

So let's hear it for the younger property generation. They are making the sorts of moves that will help to get the market going - but not for all the same reasons as their parents. This new generation are concentrating on space, style, convenience and the latest home techno-gadgets. If, in the future, the market begins to improve and they receive some capital appreciation then that will be a bonus. But for them there are more important reasons for property ownership than making money, and those are the security and enjoyment of living under their own roofs.

Please contact either Andrew Richardson, Jeremy Richardson or Richard Killoughery on 020 8643 7777 to get moving or email us at sales@christiesworld.com.

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